


tattoo

by fannishliss



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Super Soldier Serum, Ta-Nahesi Coates, Triggers, Wakanda, bucky's journals, bucky's triggers, vibranium, yay wakandan super science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 05:04:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11433732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: The triggers are undone, but Bucky still has plenty to work through in his journals.





	tattoo

**Author's Note:**

> This story is in canon with my long story, [Longing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6949354/chapters/15846331), about how Steve and Wanda helped undo Bucky's triggers. 
> 
> Also in canon with my recent story, [Trackers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11425434). 
> 
> This story is a journal entry, more of a vignette, but should stand alone, although it does explain something referenced in the other two stories, most explicitly in "Trackers."

Steve and Wanda managed to undo the triggers.Wanda’s something else — not much older than a teenager, but so damn powerful.Steve says she can get inside someone’s head, make them see whatever she wants them to see, without even touching them.She had a brother who was killed in the fight against Ultron.I wasn’t all that far away at the time, but I was still way too much of a mess to be around Stevie. 

 

Anyway, now I get to do the rest of the job. Wakandans do their own kind of therapy where a special storyteller goes to a mystical land and tells you what she sees there.I’ve been to a few sessions so far, and the therapist keeps encouraging me to write everything down.Write what happened, what HYDRA made me do, and then write what I would have done instead, how I would have made things go differently if I could have. 

 

I would have shot out the cameras on that road on Long Island. 

 

I would have told Howard that HYDRA was trying to kill him. 

 

I would have protected Howard and his wife from whoever HYDRA sent.I woulda found Peggy, and helped her set up SHIELD clean of HYDRA. 

 

I would have played ball with Howard’s kid instead of orphaning him. 

 

I would have squeezed the life out of Zola with the hand he gave me, if I could have. 

 

The Wakandan therapist says imagining what I would have done helps to free my mind from what they made me do, unlocking my guilt and regret and helping me reframe what happened. 

 

I know the things I did.Imagining can’t change reality.But Steve says I’m going good. Whenever he sees me writing, he smiles. It’s true, it gets easier every day to write it all down, to imagine a life where I can be with Stevie. 

 

Even though — 

 

* * *

 

The doctors say there are no complications with the arm.They like to run tests.Some of it, they are testing the way my body and the arm work together.Some of it, I think they are just curious to see what I can do.The Wakandans have their own stuff, kind of like the serum.They are curious to see how Steve and I compare.Certainly T’Challa in his panther suit can give me a run for my money!

 

The doctors have offered to remove the things that HYDRA put inside me over the years.At least nine trackers that were still functional when I first made my break — I managed to short them out, but they are still in there.My body copes somehow with the slow poisoning of so many burned out electronics buried inside. They could be removed and the vibranium shells recycled. I guess it’s not such a big deal.I just hate going under, that cold heavy feeling when you wake up in post op and you have no idea what they just did. 

 

They offered to try and remove the —- 

 

*** 

 

The therapist says I’m doing real good.Now that the triggers are gone, I can think through things.I’m so lucky Stevie is right here, beside me.Somehow, against any sane odds, we both survived the decades and found each other again.In a world where two men can be in love, and not just pretending to be confirmed bachelors sharing a room. 

 

When I think of Stevie, how hard he worked trying to find me, how he never gave up, I’m amazed, humbled, and awed. He’s a hero.And somehow, he’s my hero, despite everything I’ve done. 

 

There’s no way I can ever give back the lives I’ve taken — the lives that HYDRA used me to take.They used me to shape the century, and the world is still reeling from all that was lost. I want to be a part of making it better.But I also look at Stevie, and I know how greedy the world can be.The world will never be satisfied, taking all it can out of him.My greediness is to push back at the world.Steve Rogers deserves a chance to be young. He deserves the time he needs to devote to his art, to bring his greatness to life.He sits me down on the couch in our suite and shows me the art.Shows me the masters that were working in the 20s and 30s — some of them I remember — and where they went with what they were doing — and how their art impacted the world.As far as I know, I never shot any artists.Steve has such big ideas, where form and light and meaning and point of view mesh.He can see so clearly now, his hands are so steady now, and his heart is just as big as it always was. 

 

I want to feel those hands on me, to kiss those fingers, those sweet lips — 

 

***

 

Big news, Stevie and I are official. 

 

We’re gonna wait to get hitched when we go home to Brooklyn.When and if that occurs.Steve is positive it won’t be that long before the Accords are reversed. 

 

Steve is such a sweet kisser, sloppy and bad at it, fighting and biting and wrestling me around.I gotta say, I love it.I love his hands, just the same as when he was little, not a bit different.And he stares into my eyes like I hung the moon, the sap.God, I love him. 

 

***

 

He saw it.So much for that romantic evening. 

 

You can imagine his reaction. 

 

Horror.Disgust.Pity.Nausea. 

 

He tried not to let on, but I could see him choke it back. 

 

He didn’t know what to say. 

 

He and Wanda saw it in the visions, but he didn’t know it was real.The skull right there, leering. The tentacles winding around. 

 

The doctors say it’s vibranium ink.They sank a lot of vibranium in me over the years — even the socket, which is one reason the arm is working so well. 

 

Damn it. 

 

*** 

 

Stevie showed up this morning with sketches. 

 

He was embarrassed but wouldn’t let it stop him. 

 

“I did some reading.There’s such a thing as laser removal, but that wouldn’t work in this case, because of the vibranium in the ink, but also because the scar would flush, when you, ah, when the skin there blushes.So I thought, we could change the design.You could change it to look like something else.”

 

“Like what?” 

 

“Well, what about flowers?” Steve says. 

 

“Flowers?” 

 

“I don’t know!I got other ideas.I think it could look pretty good.” 

 

“Show me,” I said. 

 

He’d sketched the skull and the tentacles, which were inked in heavy black. 

 

“There’s a lot of vibranium in there,” Steve said. 

 

“I know.You can kind of feel it.” 

 

Steve hadn’t wanted to touch it, but now he seemed curious. 

 

“Well, you know how vibranium has that strange magnetic effect on other vibranium.They might be able to destabilize the ink that way so you can kind of pull it out, one grain of dust at at time. Then where the scarring remains, we could put something more to your liking.” 

 

It hit me, all of a sudden, that the horrible tattoo was just like everything HYDRA had always done.Steve was trying to retell the story, changing the mark into what it could have been, what it still could be.But unlike history, this mark was on my own body, and getting rid of it, or at least adapting it, was within the realm of possibility. 

 

“Okay,” I said. 

 

“You wanna look at sketches?” 

 

“Not right now,” I said.“Wait till you have something really exciting, then show me.” 

 

Steve went away whistling.I couldn’t believe it.Ever the optimist.Even when I have the HYDRA symbol tattooed all over my groin, its tentacles wrapping around my balls. 

 

***

As much as I hate sedation, I took it. 

 

When I woke up, nothing hurt, because they had me on the super soldier stuff, the good stuff Thor brings Steve from Asgard. As it wore off, the ache crept in over the rest of the day, then faded back again.Having a four times faster metabolism really is a relief sometimes. 

 

That was step one.After the removal, then I had to go back in and get the new design applied. It only took a day or two for the bandages to come off. 

 

I hadn’t anticipated what a relief it would be to see the mark gone. I felt so much lighter, almost like with the new arm. 

 

Steve’s design was a phoenix, with tail feathers swirling beautifully down where the tentacles had been.It was a little bigger than the old design, and covered it perfectly.The new ink was red and silver and blue and black, and it was gorgeous.Now, instead of that hateful mark, I was wearing Steve’s art on the most private parts of my body, parts only he and I would see. 

 

***

 

“The phoenix is rising,” I whispered to Stevie on the dance floor. 

 

“Better get home before we fan the flames,” Steve laughed. 

 

I have some hard work ahead in this life, but sometimes reimagining works like a charm. 

**Author's Note:**

> Here is a fun article about Wakanda and the work done by theorist, journalist and comic book writer, Ta-Nahesi Coates, to reimagine Wakanda as a powerful African country. 
> 
> https://www.theverge.com/a/marvel-black-panther
> 
> The idea of the griots accessing the mystical land of storytelling comes straight from the article. I still think walking and drumming might be involved in Wakandan therapy, as that is also something griots would do. :)


End file.
